A shot from today taken at the Six Nations powwow. Pictures are allowed and encouraged at this powwow, I made sure of that before I took any. A few more will follow over the coming days—so enjoy.

You may notice that today’s photo is a little larger than previous photos. Because average monitor resolution is much higher than it was a few years ago I decided it was time to increase the size of photos. I bumped the size up from 900 to 1020. Let me know what you think and also let me know if you would like them even bigger because I was contemplating trying 1200.

Britain needed to balance trade with China so they sold them Opium, tons and tons of the stuff! Of course people got addicted, families and communities were destroyed, but Britain kept selling it and making a fortune! Finally in 1839 the scholar and Chinese official Lin Zexu decided to enough was enough and he destroyed 2.6 million pounds of British opium in pits (one of which is shown in the picture). In retaliation Britain declared war on China and won! They then extracted huge concessions from China in the peace terms they forced on them, one of these concessions was the lease on Hong Kong. Lin Zexu was made a scapegoat by China for all the trouble his saying “no to drugs” caused. Today, however, Lin Zexu is rightly viewed as a hero of that day and Britain as the villain. Visiting the place (which is now a museum) where the story unfolded all those years ago was the only time I ever felt uncomfortable in China. Not a nice history to face. Strange how I was never taught this history in school as a child in England!

You may think, looking at this photoblog through the lens of my camera, that photography is voyeuristic and that I just walk around taking away images of people and things. Nothing is further from the truth. The camera is a means of interacting and communicating with others. For instance, the child in yesterday’s photo talked with me (in gestures) for quite a while and as shown here, he reviewed the shots I was taking indicating approval or not, and he also suggested some photos I take too. A few days later I had large prints of the best shots I took made and gave them to his parents. Of course you as a viewer do not see these stories behind the photos, but behind almost every photo there is a story of human interaction and sharing, made possible by the camera. This is probably one of the reasons photography appeals to me.